Sue Ryder to roll out AI scribe across UK hospices

Sue Ryder has signed a five-year partnership with medical scribe provider Heidi to roll out an NHS-approved ambient voice technology tool across the charity's hospices and community services.

The deployment will cover Sue Ryder's seven healthcare services, giving more than 630 palliative and end-of-life care and bereavement clinicians access to the AI scribe. The charity described it as one of the largest real-world clinical AI rollouts in UK hospice care.

The rollout follows government capital investment to improve hospice facilities and equipment and upgrade digital systems. Sue Ryder plans to use the technology as part of a wider digital transformation programme across community teams, inpatient care and bereavement support.

Documentation load

Hospice and palliative care often involves longer consultations, with more clinicians contributing to each patient's care. This can increase the documentation burden and the need for consistent record keeping across multidisciplinary teams.

Heidi's product is an ambient voice technology tool that listens to a clinical consultation and generates draft notes and other documentation. Sue Ryder plans to use it to automate clinical notes, letters and forms.

The charity linked the move to pressure on staff time and wellbeing. It will assess how ambient AI affects documentation workload, record consistency and the experience of clinicians working across different settings.

Rollout will begin over the coming months. Teams will implement the technology service by service and embed it into day-to-day practice.

NHS positioning

Heidi's AI scribe is on the NHS-approved Ambient Voice Technology list. The company says the tool is already used at scale in the NHS, including in general practice.

Heidi says more than half of NHS GPs use its tool to document consultations. It adds that the product has been deployed in 15 NHS trusts and is used in 1.5 million appointments each month.

The partnership also includes a fundraising component: Heidi will contribute £10,000 each year through activities supporting Sue Ryder's work. The company says this will also raise awareness of safe AI use in clinical environments.

Wider footprint

Heidi says it supports more than 2.3 million consultations each week across 110 languages and 190 countries. The Melbourne-based company has raised USD $96.6 million from investors including Point72 Private Investments, Blackbird, Headline, Phoenix Court's growth fund Latitude, Possible Ventures and Archangel.

It says it adheres to standards and regulatory frameworks including NHS requirements, HIPAA, GDPR and Australian Privacy Principles, and holds security certifications including SOC2 and ISO27001.

For Sue Ryder, the partnership reflects a broader shift in the hospice sector towards more formal digital transformation programmes. Providers are under pressure to modernise systems while maintaining continuity of care across hospice and home settings.

Melanie Craig, Chief Operating Officer at Sue Ryder, said: "Palliative and end-of-life care clinicians are under huge pressure, balancing complex care with rising demand and limited resources. We cannot afford for their time to be swallowed up by admin. Partnering with Heidi will help us give precious time back to the bedside, while modernising how we work across our community services and within our inpatient settings."

"We will be working closely with our clinical teams as we roll out Heidi so that the technology genuinely reflects the realities of palliative and end-of-life care, both at home and in our hospices. If we can show that AI, used safely and thoughtfully, improves both the care we provide and the experience of our staff, we hope it will give other hospices the confidence to follow."

Dr Hannah Allen, Chief Medical Officer at Heidi, said: "Bringing ambient AI into hospice care at this scale is a significant moment for the sector. Sue Ryder is showing that you can be both patient-centred and pioneering, using technology to protect the time and headspace clinicians need to care.

"We will be working side by side with Sue Ryder's teams to tailor Heidi to different services, track impact and continually refine how AI is used on the frontline. Our ambition is that the evidence from this rollout-combined with results from other hospices and home care providers-will help set a new benchmark for safe, effective use of AI in palliative and end-of-life care across the UK."